Out of the Picture
by Nestra
Summary: I'd just avoid any conversation having to do with my love life, Rory's love life, my parents' love life, Jason, Luke, Luke's diner, or the inn. Or presidential politics."


Notes: Written for CBG for shaye's Luke/Lorelai ficathon.

Thanks: gritkitty nursed the thing along and listened to my freakouts over POV. shaye offered additional beta help and ran the whole ficathon.

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"Of all the Friday night dinners I have never wanted to go to, this is the one I really don't want to go to the most." I stared at the blue silk top in my hand. No, Mom and Dad's house had been freezing lately. I'd be busy enough dodging their smart-ass comments; I didn't want to spend the evening fighting off goosebumps too. I tossed it on the bed next to Rory and turned back to evaluate the few items still left on hangers.

"Think you could have worked a few more negatives into that sentence?"

I reached into the closet and pulled out another option. "Yes, but I'd sprain my tongue. Black skirt with red flowers?"

Rory shook her head. "Too slinky."

"Damn." The pile of rejected clothing was growing bigger and bigger. "And what's with the mocking? You can't tell me you're dying to attend this week's installment of Dysfunctional Gilmore Family Theater."

"No, not really." Rory didn't say anything else, but she didn't have to. It'd been almost a week, and still no call from Dean.

After that first night, I'd laid off the 'I thought I raised you better' speech and had tried to stick to the 'Everyone makes mistakes, but now you have to be responsible' speech. I was also weighing the benefits of tracking Dean down and ripping out his heart through his nostrils. I'd spent all this time, worrying about Jess, and now Jess was the sensible one -- sensible in Jess-world, at least -- and Dean was the adulterous deflowerer of my daughter.

Maybe I'd take ninja lessons and see how many of his limbs I could break before he managed to call 911. Or maybe that was too harsh. And being a ninja would probably involve a lot of sweating.

Oh, and my parents were still split up, but still insisting that we all attend Friday night dinners. And the Dragonfly was due to open in a week. And Jason was still walking the fine line between obsession and stalking.

And I hadn't talked to Luke since that night. That night that I wasn't thinking about, because between the inn, the weird ex-boyfriend, the slightly insane parents, and the heartbroken daughter, I had enough to worry about.

"We have to leave in five minutes, you know."

"What?" I spun around to look at the clock. "Okay, fine. No more options. It's time for kamikaze fashion." I closed my eyes, stuck both hands into the closet, and pulled out the first two things I touched. Brown suede skirt, knee-length, and a patterned blouse. "They match! I rule! You find my keys, and I'll be downstairs in two minutes."

Rory pushed herself up from the bed. "If they're in the freezer again, you're going to have to get them out yourself."

"Yeah, that's what you said about the remote control."

As the sound of Rory's footsteps receded down the staircase, I took a deep breath. I could do this. I'd done a lot of difficult things in my life, from raising a kid on my own to plucking my eyebrows with dull tweezers, and this didn't even register on the Emotional Richter scale. A glass or two of wine to calm down, a round of pretending everything was okay, and we'd get the hell out of there, drive home, and drown our sorrows in ice cream and John Cusack. I'd just avoid any conversation having to do with my love life, Rory's love life, my parents' love life, Jason, Luke, Luke's diner, or the inn. Or presidential politics.

I could do this.

"I saw Kiki Masterson the other day. She told me to say hello to you."

I blinked and contemplated the forkful of pork tenderloin I was holding in midair. "Huh?"

Mom's lips narrowed. "Kiki Masterson. You went to school with her daughter Maureen."

I blinked again. It didn't help. The pork still looked strange and alien. I put my fork down and reached for my wineglass. Unlike the pork, my wineglass looked happy and comforting. It suddenly seemed possible that I was a little drunk. "Huh?"

Across the table, Rory was starting to catch on, and her eyes widened with the beginnings of panic.

"Maureen," Mom said. "Have you had your hearing checked lately?"

"No, but if you hum a few bars, I can play it on the banjo."

"What? You're not making any sense. Richard, is she making any sense?"

Dad didn't even glance up from his green beans. "Does she ever?"

Rory cleared her throat. "So, Grandma..." and I watched as Rory completely failed to come up with anything distracting to say.

"Maureen Masterson," Mom continued, as relentless as a hurricane. "You took piano lessons from the same teacher on Wednesday afternoons."

"Oh," I said as the memory clicked. Tall thin blonde girl, perpetual sneer. "You mean Mimi. God, she was such a bitch."

"Lorelai!" Mom set her fork down with a clatter.

"She had no soul. She was Damien meets Darth Vader. She told everyone that Erin Fitzgerald had bulimia and that was the reason Erin was so skinny. And then Erin got obsessed and really did start puking in the girls' bathroom between classes."

"Lorelai, this is not suitable dinner conversation."

"You started it." I grabbed my glass and drained the rest of the wine. The maid helpfully reappeared and refilled it, and I wanted to marry her. Yep, I was definitely drunk. A few too many pre-dinner cocktails, and too many glasses of with-dinner wine.

"Aw, thanks, Christa," I said. I loved Christa. Christa was my favorite maid that had lasted more than two days.

"Her name is Paula," Mom snapped.

"Nifty. Paula, you can take my plate."

"But you haven't eaten anything! Paula, leave the plate where it is." Mom's voice was growing shrill.

"Mom, maybe you should have some food." Poor Rory. She sounded worried.

I waved a reassuring hand at her. "Nah. I'm already drunk, so I might as well go for it. I mean, how often do you get the chance to see your mother make a fool out of herself?"

"I didn't think that was an experience that Rory had missed out on," Dad said.

Okay, I was drunk, but I wasn't unconscious, and that hurt. It never failed to surprise me how easily my father could cut me down. "Gee, thanks, Dad. While you're at it, why don't you screw over my boyfriend and completely wreck our relationship? No, wait, that's not an experience I've missed out on."

The sound of the doorbell was so out of place that it took me a second to process what it was. Paula gratefully escaped the dining room, probably wondering whether she could make more money working for the Kennedys, and hurried off to answer it. I shoved my chair back, stood up -- whoa, floor wobbling a little -- and headed for the open bottle of wine, glass in hand.

"Don't you think you've had quite enough?" Mom popped up next to me like Jacob Marley and grabbed my wrist hard enough to make me wince. Ow.

"Considering that Dad just basically called me an unfit mother? I don't think I've had anything close to enough." I slopped some more wine into my glass and didn't care that I'd just spilled Cabernet on a doily that might have belonged to Dolly Madison.

"He did not, Lorelai! You always do this. You exaggerate every little thing into a cause for civil war."

I pulled my arm away from Mom, wincing as her perfectly manicured fingernails scratched me. "He can call me disorganized. He can attack my career. He can mock my choice of boyfriends. But he is not allowed to criticize my parenting!"

Dad stood up, and even from the other side of the room, he seemed about nine feet tall. "Lorelai --"

"Dean?" Rory sounded like someone had just dumped a bucket of cold water over her. I spun around, which, bad idea, because my head kept spinning, and I was not willing to be an extra in The Exorcist. But no, that was definitely Dean standing there at the entrance to the dining room, looking confused and sad and determined.

"What are you doing here?" Rory hadn't moved from her chair.

"I had to talk to you."

"Young man, this is hardly the time..." Dad began.

"Are you crazy?" I recognized Rory's tone of voice from the great Puppy Rescue Debacle of '96. "I have a phone. Actually, I have two phones. You know where I live. And you thought Friday night dinner was the best place to show up?"

"I had to talk to you! I just got a new apartment." He looked meaningfully at Rory. Rory looked over at me. Mom and Dad stared at me, obviously trying to figure out some way to blame the whole situation on me. I ignored both of them and waited to see what Rory would do. Because I wanted to charge in, Mom to the rescue, but she was a big girl, and she'd gotten herself into this situation. Also, if I tried to charge anything, I might fall down.

"Grandpa, can we use your study? I'm very sorry for interrupting dinner, and I promise we won't be long."

Dad looked like he wanted to make a "hmph" noise, but he was contractually obligated to be nice to Rory, so he said, "Very well."

Rory got up from the table and walked past Dean, leaving as much space between them as she could. Dean looked over to me, I guess for encouragement, and I tried to kill him using only the power of my sloshed mind. No luck, and he followed Rory out of the room.

Which left me alone with my parents. Bad. Very bad.

"What is this?" My mother was so indignant at the disruption of dinner that she was practically sputtering. "What's going on with Rory and that boy?"

"That boy is Dean. You remember Dean. He's the tall one." And really, I thought I should try to distract them from the subject of Dean, because any second now, my mother would remember that a) Rory and Dean had broken up over a year ago and b) oh, yeah, Dean had gotten married. I'd decided to see how much of my fourth-grade dance recital I could still do when the doorbell rang again.

"What now?" sighed my mother. This was actually kind of fun. I hadn't seen her this wound up since she'd taken too much cough syrup and accidentally worn white shoes after Labor Day.

And then Jason walked in and took my fun away. This definitely called for more wine. Unfortunately, turning my back on him didn't make him go away.

"Jason!" And Dad hadn't been this upset since the last time I'd asked him if he was friends with Ken Lay. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Language, Richard!" My mother stepped over to stand by my father, her high heels clicking as she walked around the border of the Oriental rug.

Dad's face was getting red above his bow tie. Never a good sign. "This is still my house, and I'll speak any way I like!"

Jason took advantage of the distraction and slipped around the other side of the table to stand next to me. "Lorelai --"

"Hey," I said. "Long time no see. Want some wine? No? Well, this was lovely, but I must be going."

"You won't take my calls."

"And there's a reason for that, Jason. It all ties in to how I don't want to talk to you." I drank the whole glass of wine in one gulp, which immediately started to seem like a really bad idea. My stomach wasn't happy, and it takes a lot to make my stomach rebel, but a bottle of wine plus bile times adrenaline seemed to be the magic formula.

"You have to give me another chance." He'd shaved his beard. It might have been cute if I hadn't thought he'd done it as a tactical move, trying to look younger and less dangerous to my father. "Oh, that Digger Stiles," my father would think. "With that baby face, I couldn't possibly consider him a serious threat. Let me proceed to fatally underestimate him."

"I don't have to give you another chance. This has been over for weeks. When are you going to catch up?" I ran my hands through my hair, but it only made my head hurt more. At that moment, I'd have sold all of my shoes for a bottle of ibuprofen.

"I can't believe you're going to let something stupid like this ruin our relationship."

"Something stupid? I'm going to say this one more time, and I'm going to enunciate as much as I can while I'm this drunk: you're suing my family."

"Lorelai --" he started again.

I was really bored, and angry, and worried about Rory, and feeling like the only thing I wanted to do was find my bed and lie down in it. "Jason, get out."

"What?" This was Jason's problem. He was young, talented, and charming. And really not in the habit of losing. So not in the habit that he couldn't understand it.

"Get out. Go away. Be somewhere else."

"Yes," my father said. "I'm going to have to agree with that."

Jason spread his hands and stared at me. He still didn't get it. It was time for drastic action. I grabbed the lapel of his jacket and started tugging him towards the door. My parents followed, in some weird choreographed show of family support. Sure, Gilmores could tear each other apart in private, but give us an outside threat, and we banded together like a pack of socialite wolves.

We reached the front door. My mother opened it, my father stood back, and I pushed Jason out. He stumbled down the steps, and it was beautiful. But because he was Jason, he still had to try one last time.

"We were really good together," he said, climbing the steps to stand next to me. "I know you're mad at me, and I'm not saying you shouldn't be. Just don't make it permanent."

This was familiar. I'd done this before. This standing on steps thing. With a guy. Recently. Oh, right. With Luke.

"You know what, buster? Consider this permanent. We are done. Finished. Because not only are you still suing my family, but I made out with another guy a week ago, and it was really good, and he would never sue my family, because he hates lawyers, even though he accidentally married one, or maybe because he accidentally married one, but also because he would never do anything that would hurt me that much." I poked him in the chest and made sure to dig my nail in a little. "You had a choice, you made it, and okay, you were pretty good in bed, but he kisses really good, and I bet he'll be really good in bed, so you can just take yourself and your sports car and your weird little personal habits and your baby face and go away."

Somewhere in there I'd lost my main point, but Jason had finally shut up. I thought back to what I'd said and realized I'd mentioned sex, so I could never look my parents in the face again, but that was okay. I'd live with that. I also realized I'd bounced up and down a few times while I was yelling at Jason, which had sort of...agitated the wine in my stomach. Yuck.

I felt queasy, and then I felt queasier, and it wasn't going away, and this might be the dumbest thing I'd done in years, but I couldn't help it. I leaned over and puked into the bushes by the side of the door. So disgusting, and it didn't really make me feel any better, but I was pretty sure that Jason was gone for good.

I woke up the next morning and wished I could wiggle my nose like Elizabeth Montgomery and make the sunlight go away. But even trying to wiggle my nose made my head hurt. Oh, god, I remembered this feeling from high school. A hangover from expensive red wine wasn't much different than a hangover from cheap red wine.

My memories of everything post-puking were a little fuzzy. Jason had left very quickly. My parents had yelled, and there might have been disowning. Rory had appeared pretty soon after the yelling and driven us home. And then I'd crawled into bed and wished to be unconscious.

I got up and brushed my teeth, since words cannot describe how nasty my breath was, and stumbled down to the kitchen. Rory was sitting at the table, reading and drinking a cup of coffee. "Morning," she said.

"Nnnargh," I said, which she properly interpreted as a desperate plea.

"There's more coffee in the pot."

I grabbed a mug and filled it. The first bitter sip made me feel about ten times more human. "Thank god I taught you to make coffee when you were six."

"I figured you'd need it as soon as you woke up."

I winced and leaned against the counter. "Yeah, about my humiliating performance last night..."

"It's okay," Rory said.

"No, it's not." I didn't even want to think about the fact that Rory had seen me like that. I didn't really care what Mom and Dad thought about me, since chances were their opinion was pretty low to begin with. But Rory...yeah, I tried to keep the whole mother thing informal most of the time, but having her see me when I was stinking drunk kinda undermined any authority I had. Not to mention how stupid I felt.

"It's okay," she said again. "I know you've been really stressed lately, with the inn, and money problems, and Grandma and Grandpa splitting up, and I know I didn't help."

"How is Dean, by the way?"

She shrugged a little and put her book down. I wanted to brush her hair out of her face, so I wrapped my hands around my mug and took another sip. "He's okay. He and Lindsay split up."

"How do you feel about that?" More coffee. I was finally starting to feel the caffeine seeping into my bloodstream. Thank god.

"Weird, I guess. I don't really like Lindsay, but I feel kinda guilty."

"They were obviously having problems."

"Yeah," she said. "But it was...I shouldn't have gotten involved in it. It was really stupid."

"Hey, I know stupid. Stupid and I go way back. Remind me to tell you about the time I thought I was a reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe and tried to dye my hair blonde."

She smiled. Success! "You've told me that story a million times."

"But you have to admit that it's wacky fun."

"The wackiest."

"So Dean moved out?"

"Yeah, he got an apartment. I told him to call me after his divorce was finalized and to leave me alone until then."

Huh. I thought about that for a minute. It was a very Rory kind of plan. Methodical and practical, as long as she could stick with it. And I believed that she would. Everybody makes at least one big mistake in their lifetime, but Rory wasn't the type to make the same mistake twice. Maybe she and Dean would come out of this together, maybe they wouldn't. But now she was acting like my daughter again, and I wasn't worrying too much about her any more.

I walked over and kissed the top of her head. "You gonna be okay?"

"Yeah," she said, but she'd say that if her toes were on fire and someone was pouring lemon juice into a papercut on her nose. "I'm gonna go over and see Lane."

"You wanna meet for lunch later?"

"Sure. Are still avoiding Luke's?"

Luke's. Luke. I sat down. I was going to have to look into getting part of my brain removed, because I didn't think I could live with the memory of talking about how good Luke would be in bed in front of Jason and both of my parents, and probably Paula the maid.

"Since you just turned green, I'm guessing it's Al's for lunch." Rory stood up and shoved her book in her purse.

"Yeah," I said. I finished the rest of my coffee and got up to pour myself another cup. God, I missed having coffee at Luke's.

"You're going to have to talk to him eventually."

"He kissed me and then disappeared, and neither of us has called the other in a week. I don't think either of us has any idea what's going on."

"Why don't you go see him?"

"Not today," I said. "Today I'm going to be virtuous Super Mommy and clean up the house as part of my self-imposed punishment for last night. Plus, I think something might be growing in the sink. Tell Lane I said hi. Find out how things are going with her mother."

"I will. Don't clean too hard."

"Right, because that would happen."

After Rory left, I went into her room and grabbed the bottle of ibuprofen. Nothing like starting the day with a hangover, coffee, and pills. All I really needed was a doughnut, but my stomach wasn't quite that settled yet. I headed back to the kitchen and loaded up the dishwasher. Then I decided that the counters looked a little scary. I checked under the sink and found a dust-covered bottle of 409. I figured cleaning products probably didn't go bad and spritzed the counter, then sneezed when I got lemon-scented 409 up my nose. Sneezing made my head hurt.

A couple loads of laundry and a half-hearted attempt at sweeping later, the house actually did look better. My life was a mess, but my house was less of a mess, and my stomach had finally recovered enough to think about food. I checked the clock: 11:47. Definitely time for lunch. I had just grabbed the phone to call Rory when the doorbell rang.

If it was Jason, I'd try and figure out a way to throw up on his shoes this time.

I opened the door, and Luke was standing there with a big brown paper bag. "Rory said to tell you to forget about Al's."

I laughed, but it sounded a little bit like a demented chipmunk. Alvin on speed. "I'm going to lock her in her room until she's thirty-five."

"I tried that with Jess. He picked the lock."

"Rory doesn't know how to pick locks. Unless Jess taught her."

He held up the bag, and the smell of fries wafted toward me. "I brought lunch."

"Thanks," I said. "Uh, come in."

Good thing I'd done dishes, since that meant there were clean plates. I opened the dishwasher, which let out a burst of damp air, and grabbed two plates still warm to the touch. Luke pulled burgers and fries out of the bag, followed by some kind of sandwich on wheat bread that was for him. I thought I saw sprouts sticking out of the corner, but I didn't want to look too close.

I set the plates down on the table. "So."

"So."

"How have you been?"

He slammed his hands down on the table, and the plates rattled. "How have I been?"

Whoops. Wrong question.

"I left you at the inn. I chased down naked Kirk and got him back in his room, which was no picnic, let me tell you. And you? You disappeared."

"I didn't disappear!" Damn. Chipmunk thing again. "I came back here to talk to Rory, and then stuff happened, and I got back to the inn, and you were gone."

"I went home."

"You chickened out!"

"You disappeared!"

"We're going in a circle here, and my burger's getting cold." And that had come out a little bitchier than I intended.

"You think I don't know how you work?" he asked.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

He sighed. "Look, I've seen this whole routine. I've watched you go through a lot of boyfriends."

"Hey! A lot?"

"Right, I forgot. A lot of boyfriends, and one fiance'."

Damnit. This whole conversation made me want to drink again. "Do you really want to play 'dueling romantic histories'? Because I will bring up your 'oops, got drunk on the Love Boat and got married' bit."

"I'm not trying to turn this into a contest," he sighed, rubbing a hand across his forehead. "I'm just saying that you tend to act a certain way."

"Yeah, well, not this time."

"Really?" He didn't sound pissed any more. He sounded...interested. My heart thumped a little.

"I promise," I said.

He smiled at me, just a little. "Your burger's getting cold."

"We should eat, then." We both sat down at the table, kind of awkwardly, and dug into the food. I made a little moaning noise when I bit into the burger, just like I always do; his head jerked up, and I could feel myself blushing. Everything felt weird and different now. All of my old habits meant something new, and I wasn't always sure what.

We didn't say much while we ate, and I'm not sure which one of us was more freaked out by my not talking. Finally we finished the food. I stashed the extra stuff in my fridge, and the fact that he knew me well enough to bring extra food seemed really nice.

He fidgeted a little and stood up next to me. "So what now?"

"I don't know," I said.

"I want to kiss you again." He stepped closer. He smelled really good.

I blinked. "Oh. Okay --" and then he did kiss me. God, I love the way guys feel, so solid and warm, and Luke was more solid than anyone I'd touched in a long time. And he kissed really well.

After a few seconds -- okay, more than a few seconds -- he pulled back, but left his arms around me. I smiled up at him. "Hi."

"Hi."

"Are we really doing this?" I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders under my arms. "Why not?"

"Why not? Do you want fifteen reasons?"

"Not really. It was kind of a rhetorical question."

I leaned back a little, but he didn't let go. "There's the whole town thing, and the part where this is a little weird, and maybe the part where I'm not sure how Rory feels about this?"

"That's not even close to fifteen."

"You weren't wrong, you know. About me. And my tendency to run."

He chuckled, and I felt the vibration through my skin. "Where are you going to go? I live here. And you'd starve without me."

"I'm serious," I said. "I don't...I don't want either of us to get hurt."

He shrugged again. "We can talk ourselves out of this, or we can give it a try. If you want to keep it quiet for a while, we can do that. Talk to Rory, figure out what you need to do to make her comfortable. And try to figure out that you don't have to run."

"Easy for you to say."

He kissed me gently. "Do you want to do that again?"

"Yes," I mumbled against his lips.

Another kiss. "Do you want to have dinner with me tomorrow night?"

"Yes."

We were getting down to some serious kissing, and maybe a little groping, and I was finding out that he was about as good with his hands as with his mouth, but he pulled back again, his eyes narrowed.

"What about that Jason guy?"

I leaned my head against his chest and laughed, appreciating how soft flannel could be. "He's out of the picture. Trust me."

--End--


End file.
